Are You a Red Bird or a Blue Bird?

Are You A Red Bird Or A Blue Bird?

In which group do you belong? If done correctly, you could belong to both groups during any given school year and actually feel good about it! During the last century, the common feature of ability grouping and tracking has become a high profile and harshly criticized topic for debate in the educational setting. Critics of ability grouping often state that this type of environment does not benefit most students and often dooms low ability students to an inadequate education. As a result of the accusations and a desperate attempt at education reform, many schools and districts have begun to steer away from ability grouping practices. I believe that heterogeneous grouping is a benefit to students in most subject areas. However, I consider the research that supports the benefit of heterogeneous grouping vs. ability grouping in the math curriculum to be full of loopholes. In fact, Robert Slavin's research supports ability grouping for students in math. Students should be flexibly grouped by ability in the math curriculum.

Although ability grouping has been condemned by groups such as the National Governor's Association, The Children's Defense Fund, Carnegie Corporation, and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, most surveys show that education administrators, teachers, and parents strongly support ability grouping, In 1996 a nationwide study done by Argys, Brewer, & Rees revealed that scores for student that had formerly been considered in lower tracks of the math curriculum had increased when they were moved to mixed-ability grouping. However, the study also indicated that students with scores of average and above decreased their scores in the same mixed-ability groups. A study done by Gamoran in 1987 revealed a large gap between improvements made by students in lower level math curriculums and the achievement made by students in high level math tracts. Gamoran contributed these gaps in learning to the differentiation of questioning techniques between the lower and higher level groups of students. I believe that this study reveals the desperate need for higher level thinking questions to be asked in the lower level groups of students, but it does not mean that mixed ability grouping is the alternative solution. It does not prove that ability grouping is harmful to the lower level ability groups and only reiterates the self fulfilling prophecy a teacher has for students. Teachers must make a conscious effort to ask higher level thinking questions in high, average, and low ability classes, and students should easily move students in and out of flexible ability groups. As educators, we must have high expectations for each and every high ability and low ability student.

Ability grouping allows students to develop naturally in mathematics and provides flexibility in meeting